Life can be difficult for rural communities living on the edge of protected areas in Kenya and Nepal. Limited income generating opportunities and daily threats from wildlife results in poor financial security and negatively impact’s people’s wellbeing.
With few other options available, people living in these places can become over-reliant on natural resources, such as firewood and fodder. This has negative consequences for people and wildlife, as unsustainable resource use causes habitat degradation and can push people into dangerous encounters with wild animals.
For the last three years, together with partners, we have been supporting people in four rural communities in Kenya and Nepal to co-exist with wildlife by building their financial resilience through community banking schemes, improving livelihood opportunities by establishing new enterprises, and increasing their engagement with protected area authorities.
This was only possible thanks to the generosity of donors to our ‘For People, For Wildlife’ appeal in 2019 , which raised £1,553,736 including £702,074 of matched funding from the UK government.
The project “Stewardship and rural development for poor and marginalised frontier communities living alongside protected areas and high conservation value species”, which finished in October 2023, aimed to reduce the costs of living alongside wildlife and contribute to poverty alleviation, decreasing engagement in illegal wildlife activities and encouraging stewardship over vital ecosystems in Kenya and Nepal.
By the end of the project, we had directly engaged with 1,298 people living near to high-value wildlife. In Kenya, our project sites bordered Tsavo East and West National Park, and in Nepal our project sites were located on the border of Chitwan National Park as well as a Divisional Forest in Dhanusa District.
Conservation and development during crises
Our project started in November 2020, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. This not only led to project delays due to restrictions on movement, but also negatively impacted the resiliency of community members in both countries as employment opportunities were lost. This had the potential to leave people less able to cope with human-wildlife conflict, such as elephants trampling crops or carnivores killing livestock, which risked pushing already vulnerable community members further into poverty.
The secondary impacts of Covid-19 were added to as severe drought hit our project site in Kenya in late 2020, with failed rains until the end of 2023. This further reduced local labour options, which are primarily agriculture-based, and drove more frequent and severe incidents of human-wildlife conflict, as wildlife moved outside the protected area in search of water and food. Adding further difficulties were the rising costs of living and economic inflation experienced in both countries throughout the project period.
Despite these challenges, we achieved over 40% increase in the wellbeing score of our participants compared to the start of the project. Contributing to this result was the strengthened sense of unity between project participants. In Kenya, social funds were established through the village savings and loans associations to support members in times of need, building trust within these banking groups and increasing people’s financial security. As project participants from one of our project sites in Kenya said;
“Before ZSL we used to look down on ourselves as Kamba women living along the boundaries of the park, but through the villages savings and loans association we have been empowered.”
Likewise in Nepal, the community banks brought people from different ethnicities together for the first time, not just in our project sites but further afield too, through peer-to-peer learning opportunities with our other established banking schemes in the region. This sharing of individual stories was vital for boosting the confidence of community members to run the banks successfully and independently, long into the future. As community bank members in Pithauli, near to Chitwan National Park said;
“Social cohesion has been developed within the community. Despite being from a marginalized community, this project has developed our confidence in society and beyond to independently start new livelihood enterprises that will benefit our economic resiliency.”
Positive impacts for people and wildlife
As well as improving the wellbeing of people living in these four communities, this project also had a positive impact on the protection of local natural resources and awareness of human-wildlife coexistence. This included substantial declines in self-reported dependency on said resources - such as firewood and fodder for livestock - by our participants compared to the start of the project.
In Kenya, extensive outreach and engagement activities were key drivers to achieve these aims. This included bus tours into Tsavo’s National Parks, which gave community members their first opportunity to observe wildlife in a more positive way - outside of a conflict incident, increasing people’s sense of stewardship over the environment. These tours aimed to reach all members of the community, with one beneficiary saying that she and others living with disability finally felt visible and valued by the Kenya Wildlife Service and its partners.
Likewise in Nepal, our outreach activities increased participants’ knowledge and awareness of the forest, including growing awareness of the importance of maintaining the ecosystem services these habitats provide. Access to low-interest loans from the community banks empowered participants to grow the enterprises established by the project, increasing household income and helping to reduce the need to collect resources from the forest. In Doodhpani, community bank members said:
“Yes, of course the project interventions, such as access to microfinance and enterprise development, have reduced our dependency on the natural resources. Nowadays we are growing grass in our own fields for cattle. We are also not facing conflict between human and wildlife, because now people are not going to the community forest to collect forest products.”
Creating a more balanced world
We’ve achieved positive impacts for species too, with 95% of participants saying that human-wildlife conflict had either strongly decreased or decreased in the final year of the project. This has meant fewer incidents where community members were driven to kill wildlife in retaliation for damage or loss, helping to protect species such as lions, leopards, tigers, birds and snakes. People’s attitudes towards conservation have vastly improved, as their livelihoods were better protected by the project’s human-wildlife conflict mitigation measures, such as predator-proof enclosures for livestock and planting crops that animals don’t eat.
In Kenya, Monica Musyoki, Chairperson of Ngwatanio ya Wayani village savings and loans association said:
“The predator-proof kraal has made my life much easier. Before the construction of the kraal, as a household we used to stay alert all night so that we could respond to or chase away the predators in case of any attacks, resulting in poor sleeping habits. The kraal has motivated me to take a loan from the village savings and loans association to buy more goats as I am sure they will be safe.”
Similarly in Nepal, project participants from Pithauli community bank said;
“Due to the project interventions, our confidence has grown in implementing human-wildlife conflict mitigation measures that help to reduce our stress level. In the past, we were worried about being victims of wildlife attacks, livestock depredation and economic loss.”
Thank you!
We want to say a huge thank you to everyone who donated to our For People, For Wildlife appeal, making this work possible and helping us to strengthen the ability of people in four rural communities to cope with the costs of living with wildlife and to safeguard endangered species and important habitats in Kenya and Nepal.
By working with and responding to the ever-evolving natural environment around us, we can create a more balanced world where people and wildlife live better, together.
Find out more - download project impact report